Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[rocketphish]

Three of five key light-rail management roles empty

By Joanne Chianello, OTTAWA CITIZEN October 30, 2013 8:10 PM

There’s upheaval at the city’s light-rail office these days. Two senior city managers have abruptly disappeared from the operation in the past few days.

These surprising departures are on the heels of last week’s revelation that Gary Craig, who had been acting director of the light rail office for eight months, was immediately returning to his old job as head of design and construction.

That left the director’s job vacant. Imagine: no boss overseeing the city’s $2.1-billion light rail project — forcing deputy city manager Nancy Schepers to take on the day-to-day oversight on a temporary basis.

Add this week’s complete disappearance of two senior light-rail managers, and that leaves three of the key five management positions essentially empty.

The organizational chaos at the rail office makes it hard to put much faith in the city’s official explanation that the personnel changes were part of a “restructuring.”

According to city spokesman Michael Fitzpatrick, since the contract had been awarded to the Rideau Transit Group consortium late last year, the function of the rail implementation office, as it’s officially known at the city, would be changing as Ottawa moves closer to actually building the light rail line.

The 2014 draft budget mentions the restructuring, referring to “decreased staffing levels as the Confederation Line project transitioned from the preliminary engineering and procurement phases to the implementation phase.” Indeed, the part of the budget that deals with light-rail implementation calls for two fewer full-time employees.

However, if an organizational restructuring is the actual reason for the departures, then this is the worst planned restructuring of all time.

Light rail is the city’s largest-ever project. So if there was a time in this massive project’s implementation when new skills would be required, you’d expect the city to plan a little better for the transition. Instead, there is no permanent director for the rail office, and it appears that there’s been no effort made to search for one since the former director up and quit last February.

As of this week, two more managers are gone suddenly, apparently with no immediate replacements at the ready.

If that’s the city’s restructuring strategy, then it’s nothing short of incompetent.

There are too many details about this issue that just don’t add up.

Although the budget calls for a reduction of two full-time employees, city treasurer Marian Simulik said last week said it was very unlikely any of the 55 positions being cut across the board at the city would result from city workers getting pink slips.

Now, it’s not clear under what circumstances the two senior managers at the rail office departed and, to be fair, the city is not allowed to comment on personnel issues.

Daniel Farrell had been the manager of “contract management” for the Confederation Line since the start of this year, and before that he was the manager for rail funding and procurement. In fact, Farrell had worked in procurement and contract management at the city for 23 years, according to his LinkedIn profile. In the past few weeks, he even won an award for “transportation innovation” from the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships — an award for which the city nominated him. He won another award for procurement leadership in 2006 for the cancelled north-south light rail line.

Janice Marks was the manager of rail business services and has worked for the city since 1991 in a number of areas, including occupational health and safety, human resources, and in the rail office for the past four years.

Even if Farrell and Marks weren’t the perfect fit for the restructured light rail office — and that’s conjecture at this point — is it plausible that there were no other roles for these veterans in a workforce of about 15,000? Remember, this is a city that made Lee Ann Snedden the manager of policy development and urban design, even though she is not a planner. In her past decade or so with the city, Snedden managed the Nepean Sportsplex, followed by five or so years in Community Sustainability, a department that was disbanded, leaving Snedden without a job.

So the city could find Snedden another position, but not Farrell or Marks?

It doesn’t quite make sense.

To further complicate matters, a long-standing contractor also exited the light rail office this week: John Beard, the principal at Cardigan Group Inc. and a specialist in project management. According to the city, Cardigan’s contract had expired.

It’s not clear how long Beard had been on contract with the city, but his LinkedIn profile shows that his relationship with the light rail office dates back to June 2010. And that relationship has been substantial: the city paid him over $420,000 over the past three years, according to city reports.

Why was Beard’s contract not renewed? Why do two longtime city employees suddenly find themselves without jobs? And perhaps most important — at least for us taxpayers — how can the city be managing our most important infrastructure project so haphazardly?

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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/ottawa...rail+management+roles/9103973/story.html

[McC]

sometimes people who've been with organizations for over twenty years just want to leave... (Occam's Razor?)

[Buggys]

Smells fishy. I hope that down the road, this doesn't turn into something like the Airport Parkway or Strandherd bridge sagas.

[rocketphish]

Consultant ‘vital and integral’ to Ottawa’s rail project leaves for Toronto

By David Reevely, OTTAWA CITIZEN October 31, 2013 3:40 PM

OTTAWA — Add this to the turmoil in the city department responsible for Ottawa’s $2.1-billion light-rail project: The departure of super-consultant Brian Guest.

The rail implementation office is, to hear the city tell it, going through an ordinary transition as its focus shifts from finding the huge consortium of construction and engineering companies that will build and maintain the downtown rail line to managing the construction project. In practice, that’s meant:

The departure of its director John Jensen eight months ago. The longtime city transit manager has moved to Toronto to work on rail efforts there.

A demand by his acting replacement Gary Craig about 10 days ago to be demoted back to his regular job overseeing the technical aspects of design and construction. Deputy city manager Nancy Schepers, whose empire extends well beyond the rail office, took over.

The subsequent departures of two more rail-office managers (Daniel Farrell and Janice Marks) with nearly 50 years of City Hall experience between them, who lost their city jobs entirely. Their leaving has been described as part of the transition but the departments they oversaw still exist, with new managers.

The sudden “expiration” of a contract with consultant John Beard, whose specialty is project controls — measurements and milestones that are constantly monitored to make sure things are still on track.

It’s a lot of change already in a department that has about 25 permanent staff. But Guest’s leaving may put the biggest hole in the operation. He midwifed the O-Train into being in the late 1990s as an aide to then-regional chairman Bob Chiarelli. More recently, he and his Boxfish Group consulting firm have been given contract after contract, typically deals worth about $150,000 for six months of work at a time — the maximum size of a contract that a senior city official can let without a full-blown competitive bidding process.

Boxfish’s last contract award was in the spring, for $142,000, for the usual wide-ranging assignment: “(T)o support on a range of Strategic, Legislative and Communications Activities including contract administration, project governance, document and report preparation, legislative and inter governmental relations as part of the Confederation Line Project,” according to a quarterly public report of contracts let without council’s direct approval. The company also got a $25,000 contract then to continue work it had previously done on the rail project’s website.

As city spokesman Michael FitzPatrick has put it, “Boxfish is a vital and integral part of the Light Rail Implementation Team.”

Guest is the small firm’s president. He’s been close to Mayor Jim Watson, serving on the transition team that helped him set up his new mayoral administration in 2010. He’s doctored speeches for the mayor, worked on OC Transpo’s cutting of $20 million worth of service in spring 2011, been a consultant on several city budgets (though not the one for 2014 that city council is soon to pass), and simultaneously worked for Plasco Energy Group as it negotiated the terms of a deal with the city to use its experimental garbage-disposal process.

Above all, though, Guest has been the big outboard brain in the rail office, on contracts that would have made him one of the city’s highest-paid employees if he’d been a staffer. Most significantly, he’s credited with the idea to shift the downtown rail tunnel’s route so it runs more directly under Queen Street, saving deep tunnelling costs and pulling underground stations up to more convenient places closer to the surface.

But now he’s gone. His cream-coloured Chevy Volt, so frequently a fixture in the free charging spot for electric cars by City Hall’s south doors, has given way to other people’s Nissan Leafs and Ford Fusions.

Guest told the Citizen by email Wednesday night that his departure is part of the transition in the rail implementation office away from planning the downtown rail line and toward constructing it, which isn’t his specialty.

“(M)y role at RIO had been diminishing with (the construction contract) award and has now wound down completely. I am in Toronto now on a new project ... RIO staff are understandably focused on the contract administration,” he wrote.

According to documents released to the Citizen under access-to-information legislation, one of his last tasks for the rail office was an elaborate September memorandum for city manager Kent Kirkpatrick and treasurer Marian Simulik pointing out oddities in the way the provincial and federal governments fund transit and suggesting pressure points where they could push for changes that would mean more money for Ottawa.

The federal government won’t let its transit funding be used to buy land, for instance, even though new rail projects often need a lot of it. In this city in particular, the memo says, the federal government itself demands to be paid top dollar for property the city needs, as if the land were fully open for development even when it’s land specifically bought or expropriated by the feds to keep development from happening.

The memo doesn’t specifically mention the land along the Ottawa River the city needs to get from the National Capital Commission for its planned western extension of the first LRT phase, but the implication is unmistakable.

The memo also talks about technical restrictions on what federal money can be used for that limit cities’ flexibility in public-private partnerships of the type Ottawa is using for the downtown rail project, and in which Guest now specializes. More could be build faster if the federal government would loosen its rules up about when its money will flow and whether it can cover “transaction close costs and financing costs.”

The province, meanwhile, is funding massive rail projects in greater Toronto partly because it’s an economic centre but partly because it’s such a mishmash of local governments that having a senior government write huge cheques is the only way to get anything done, Guest wrote in the memo.

As it happens, Guest’s new project, he said Wednesday, is working with the provincial transit agency Metrolinx on finding a contractor for Toronto’s “Eglinton Crosstown” light-rail line, a $4-billion east-west rail project that’s in competition to be the biggest single transit project in Canada ever. (It would definitely have been the biggest if, as originally planned, it included a section in Scarborough that Toronto city council has recently decided should be a subway.) That means he’s working again with Jensen, who left Ottawa to be Metrolinx’s vice-president of new rail projects, on one of those completely provincially funded rail projects in Toronto.

If Ottawa’s transit plans pan out, that could be finishing up just in time for this city to be gearing up to expand its rail network as the downtown line opens in 2018.

Click here to visit our special LRT site.

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ottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa
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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Consul...roject+leaves+Toronto/9107847/story.html

[rocketphish]

No empty management positons at LRT office, says Ottawa city media spokesman

Posted by: Joanne Chianello
October 31, 2013. 4:37 pm • Section: City Hall

This week, I wrote that the restructuring in Ottawa’s light-rail office was in disarray, what with the acting directory going back to his old — but vital — job of overseeing the design and constructing of the Confederation Line, with no replacement ready. In the meantime, Deputy City Manager Nancy Schepers is overseeing the day-to-day operations of the office until a permanent replacement is found.

And on Monday, we discovered, three people exited the rail office: one long-time consultant and two city employees who between them have more than 50 years of experience and who held two key management spots. Again, there were no apparent replacements for the two manager positions.

However, late Wednesday night (10.28 p.m. to be exact), city of Ottawa media spokesman Michael Fitzpatrick emailed to say that:

“…the reorganisation at RIO on Monday saw Lorne Gray, Craig Killen and Simon Dupuis join the management team reporting directly to Nancy (Schepers) to assist in ensuring that RIO continues to effectively focus its efforts on communication, compliance, enforcement and oversight on the implementation of Confederation Line and associated projects. So, there are no vacancies in the management team.”

If Fitzpatrick says so. Because it’s a little hard, at this point anyway, to know exactly who’s doing what, as no titles were attached to the above-mentioned new members of the management team.

And the management positions appear to be changing as well. In response to further questions, Fitzpatrick clarified how the management jobs in the rail office are being re-jigged:

The responsibilities of the former procurement manager position have been divided between two positions: contract administrator for the Confederation Line Project Agreement with RTG, and business and administrative support (including submittals, payments and external contracts) for RIO. Both of these program-manager-level positions will report directly to the RIO Director.

The business services unit (which is responsible City corporate services) has been streamlined and its responsibilities will be overseen by a program manager-level position that also reports directly to the Director.

For what it’s worth, the city’s online employee directory lists Lorne Gray as the “contract administration lead,” Craig Killin (that’s Killin with an “i” — couldn’t find one with an “e”) as a project control specialist and Simon Dupuis as the program manager of stakeholder relations in the rail office.

Not sure why this couldn’t have been announced on Tuesday, or even Wednesday when a host of media types were asking about what the hell was going on in the rail office.

http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2013/10/3...-lrt-office-ottawa-city-media-spokesman/

[kevinbottawa]

Tweet from City of Ottawa:

@ottawacity: A roadheader excavation machine starts tunnelling today at the western entrance of the #ottLRT tunnel! pic.twitter.com/LS4FBek4mj

[BenTheGreat97]

Originally Posted by kevinbottawa

Tweet from City of Ottawa:

Awesome! Hopefully it can be finished ahead of schedule

[McC]

now with blurry video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZZ2kbT09NM&feature=youtu.be

[EdFromOttawa]

Originally Posted by BenTheGreat97

Awesome! Hopefully it can be finished ahead of schedule

lol.

[BenTheGreat97]

Originally Posted by edfromottawa

lol.

+1

[gmarshall]

Here's an up to date gallery of photos I took of the confederation line construction:

http://aerialphotographs.ca/confed2013-11/

Starts in the west end at Tunneys, then goes on to LeBreton where you can see the tunnel entrance and the newly delivered digging equipment.

The construction along the Queensway from Nicholas to Blair is pretty evident. It's interesting that they've laid out future features with orange tape. It's like they did it specifically FOR the aerial view.

[White Pine]

Great pics, thanks for the update!

[rocketphish]

Scott Street to replace Transitway during LRT project, but city isn’t saying how

By David Reevely, OTTAWA CITIZEN November 12, 2013 7:39 PM

OTTAWA — Nearly a year after the city agreed to a light-rail construction plan that means turning Scott Street into a replacement Transitway for two years, nearby residents are still waiting to find out just what that will mean for the major road that cuts through their neighbourhood.

“It goes back to 2007, when we were involved with (planning a downtown rail tunnel), when we were beginning to ask the city, during LRT construction, what do you plan to do?” said Jeff Leiper, a director of the Hintonburg Community Association and formerly its president. “We’ve known it was coming for quite some time. It was obviously more conceptual then, but we knew, conceptually, that Scott Street would have more buses during the construction. And as time has gone on we’ve been waiting to get more specifics and we haven’t got them.”

Scott was recently rebuilt and redesigned to add bike lanes. Then last December, city council accepted a bid from rail-building consortium Rideau Transit Group (RTG) for the $2.1-billion LRT construction project that included a proposal to widen the road so it could have dedicated bus lanes: The rail line is to end at Tunney’s Pasture, and Transitway buses won’t be down in their usual trench while RTG is working there.

But what Scott Street will look like, how pedestrian crossings will work, what can be done for people who live close by — none of that’s clear, Leiper said, and there have been no meetings since June. Minutes from that meeting, produced by the city’s own rail office, promise a bunch of answers to residents’ questions at a fall followup that hasn’t been scheduled. A “safety review” is underway, but it seems not to involve the community.

“Mechanicsville kids cross to get to Connaught or to Devonshire (elementary schools). I guess that’s underway, but there’s been no discussion — we were surprised to find out that was underway. With no discussion with the community, which doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

A public session promised for November has been downgraded to a closed-doors session with just a few people, he said, and he’s been warned the city won’t have much to add. Maybe in the new year.

The city didn’t respond by the end of the day Tuesday to questions from the Citizen about the issue.

“As we get closer to the wire we’re running out of time for alternatives,” Leiper said. The time when the big bus detour is supposed to start, in about 2016, seems like a long time away, but with complicated construction plans to be carried out first (for Scott itself, for bus turnarounds and ramps to the Transitway, for the work on the Tunney’s Pasture station), the clock is ticking.

If the buses can’t go somewhere else, the community association wants a design that puts buses on the north side of Scott and car traffic on the south side. That would provide at least some buffer for people who live right on Scott Street. “Their windows will be nine feet from 192 buses an hour,” Leiper said.

The biggest concern is that there seems to be no definite plan for putting Scott right again. Everyone assumes that’s what’s supposed to happen — a whole neighbourhood plan is underway for north Hintonburg and south Mechanicsville that assumes it — but nobody has put it down in writing or attached a budget to it.

It’s particularly galling that the city coughed up $80 million in a couple of weeks to change its proposal for a western extension of this first LRT line to soothe residents who didn’t want to see and hear it close to their homes, Leiper said.

“The path of least resistance, and something that would make sense from a scheduling and car perspective, to keep running buses along Scott Street,” Leiper said. He’s worried that OC Transpo won’t want to inconvenience commuters coming from the west and heading to Gatineau by making them bus to Tunney’s Pasture, transfer to a train to get to LeBreton Flats, and then transfer again to another bus to cross the river.

Turmoil in the rail office hasn’t helped. It’s without a full-time director, two of its four managers were pushed out last month, and influential consultant Brian Guest left in September. Three different people have been in charge of Scott Street just in the last year or so, Leiper said. “We’d like to see staff, longtime city staff, dealing with this issue.”

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ottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/ottawa...g+project+city+saying/9157057/story.html

[Richard Eade]

As of, November 11, 2013, the Central Shaft was slowly getting deeper.


I found it interesting that the upper portion of the retaining wall appeared to be nothing more than fabric stretched between the piles and the sprayed with shotcrete.


The majority of the ramp to the Eastern Portal seems to be nearly ready, with the foam and heating coils going down before the concrete is poured.




The ramp is steeper than I thought it would be, but it is possible that this ramp is specifically for rubber tired equipment and that the future LRT ramp will have a different profile.

And the second Road Header has arrived and is being prepared for work.


But before the Road Header can get to work, the spile ‘umbrella’ needs to be put into place. This involves a horizontal drill installing an arc of tubes (roughly 90 feet long each) into the soft material above where the tunnel will be dug. The tubes will be stiffened by being filled with grout. This offers support of the overburden during the digging (until the shotcrete can be sprayed from inside the tunnel).




Yes, there is a lot of water in that trench. It was almost over the driller’s boots; which is why they were installing a bigger pump. I expect that most of the water came from the drilling operation.

Once the spile ‘umbrella’ is in place, this ‘level’ end of the ramp will be dug down to its final profile. Then the metal can be cut away from the face and the Road Header can get to work

[bartlebooth]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

As of, November 11, 2013, the Central Shaft was slowly getting deeper...

Thanks for the update! These are great photos.

[eemy]

Would they install heating coils in a temporary ramp? I'm kind of surprised they would be installing them in the first place, though I suppose it makes sense kind of.

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

As of, November 11, 2013, the Central Shaft was slowly getting deeper.

That's what....she said?

[Richard Eade]

An opinion piece from the Centre town News; also reprinted in the Citizen.

Watson's LRT plan won't reduce traffic congestion
Friday, 25 October 2013
By Sarah Thuswaldner

The morning traffic jam in Ottawa is practically a public landmark, but the city’s efforts to curb it might be misplaced.
Mayor Jim Watson announced a new plan for a light rail system on Oct. 9. It’s intended to reach as far east as Place d’Orleans, as far west as Bayshore, and some distance to the south – although it won’t extend as far as the airport.
While the proposed system neglects some significant parts of the city, more serious problems may develop. According to Matthew Turner, an economics professor at the University of Toronto who researches urban transportation, some of the expected benefits may be unrealistic.
“You want to reduce congestion? Use tolls. You want to move people around cheaply? Use buses. You want to spend a lot of money to move not a lot of people around? Build a subway or a light rail,” Turner says.
Turner says light rails may reduce congestion for a short time, but have no effect in the long-term. More drivers, he says, will be attracted to what they perceive as extra space, resulting in the same overcrowded traffic.
He says that the only proven way to reduce congestion in cities is to install tolls.
“If you make everyone pay five dollars to get on the 417 during rush hour, people will spread out their trips,” he says.
Recent research has also found that light rail projects in the U.S. fail to live up to expectations. In September 2013, the Journal of Economic Literature published a paper by Clifford Winston, entitled “On the Performance of the U.S. Transportation System: Caution Ahead.”
Winston explains that light rail systems are not cost-effective because they are sparsely used during off-peak times, and cannot change routes to adjust for shifts in commuting patterns, and therefore rarely reach carrying capacity.
If this holds true for Ottawa, and riders will not substantially use light rail, it may need more tax money than expected to meet its running costs.
The budget for Ottawa’s light rail project is less than $2.5 billion, but if the system follows the trend in the U.S., it could end up costing much more in the long-term.
Rae Zimmerman, a public administration professor at New York University, says people find light rail systems “attractive,” as they can be very convenient for commuters. However, she says both light and heavy rail systems can only be cost-effective in densely populated areas.
Washington, D.C., she says, is an excellent example of a well-regarded rail system, which “does a wonderful job” of serving its outlying areas.
However, there are significant differences between Washington, D.C. and Ottawa – for example Washington has a population density of 3,977 people per square kilometre, according to the 2012 census. In comparison, Statistics Canada reported in 2011 that Ottawa has 316.6 people per square kilometre – less than a 10th the density of D.C.
Zimmerman says without significant population density, a light rail system will not be efficient. This contrasts with the high hopes some communities have for light rail.
Jamie Kwong, executive director of the Orleans Chamber of Commerce, says the planned light rail going “right into the town centre” will reduce traffic and drive economic development in Orleans.
Robert Dekker, vice-president of the Centretown Citizens Community Association, says he hopes the plan will lead to less congestion in Centretown, and encourage business in the area.
Both communities may end up disappointed. Turner says no form of transport has been shown to promote financial growth in a city – and there’s no reason to think light rail would.
Dekker also says he hopes a light rail to the airport will be added, but at the moment, the city has plans only to expand the airport parkway.
Kanata has also been left out of the new light rail design, with road extensions and expansions being planned to accommodate traffic there. However, Turner says bigger roads, like light rail, do not reduce traffic congestion in the long-term.
“If there’s more road space, people will fill it,” he says.
Rosemary Leu, executive director of the Kanata Chamber of Commerce, says the city is focusing on developing the east end while neglecting the west end.
The Kanata community, while pleased at the promise of road developments, is “disappointed” by its minimal inclusion in the master plan, Leu says.
“Even transportation within Kanata is not easy. We’re just as much taxpayers as anyone else,” she says.
That tax money might be needed more than city planners expect, if the light rail fails to live up to its hype and expert predictions hold true. The entire city could end up paying for a system that benefits a sparse few without reducing traffic, which can only lead to a more frustrating morning commute.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 14 November 2013 )

[phil235]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

An opinion piece from the Centre town News; also reprinted in the Citizen.

A bit of a superficial piece. The type of generalities being thrown around here aren't of much use when judging the prospects for a specific project.

In particular, the comparison of the density of Washington vs. that of Ottawa is nonsensical. The Ottawa figure of 316 ppl/km that is cited includes the greenbelt and the massive rural area within the city's political boundaries. A relevant comparison would be between Washington and the density inside the greenbelt, where the actual figures are much more comparable.

[gjhall]

Also, the goal isn't to reduce congestion, it is to allow significant growth in population and employment.